


rivers and roads

by raisindeatre



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: (all it means is that I wanted to write something but didn't have time for a full-length fic), (this might seem artsy but don't be fooled), F/M, Fluff; mostly, Freeform, mostly post-series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2018-06-10 16:02:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6963526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raisindeatre/pseuds/raisindeatre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zuko and Katara; 50 snapshots, 50 sentences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	rivers and roads

**Author's Note:**

> Prior to this, I'd only ever written one other fic, also for this pairing, and I thought that would be it; done and dusted. I was wrong - these two have sunk their claws into my heart, and they just won't let go. It turns out there are a few stories to be written about them yet.
> 
> This writing style is a bit of a depature for me - this kind of snapshot, transitory moments caught in amber style - but I had a blast. I can only hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.

**#1 – Excavate**

Zuko has worn many faces throughout his life – crown prince, outcast, Fire Lord – but he finds that he is most himself with Katara; that loving her brushes the dirt off his bones.

 

**#2 – Tilt**

He turns his head just a little whenever he is introduced to somebody, enough so that the scar is not the first thing they see; she never says anything, but she notices every time.

 

**#3 – Chameleon**

He marvels, sometimes, at how easily she slips into her duties as Fire Lady, how effortlessly she makes friends and forges alliances, before he realizes that for Katara, it’s not a matter of changing herself to fit in, but the opposite - what do you call a creature who changes the world around it to suit itself?  

 

**#4 – Family**

Zuko hides in his council room all day after Katara breaks the news to Sokka; when he leaves around midnight, Sokka is waiting for him, and before he can say anything, the other boy has stepped forward and is hugging him tight.

 

**#5 – Laugh**

“I see the sun’s not the only thing you rise with,” she whispers to him on their wedding night; he buries his face in the naked curve of her shoulder, and it takes her a while to notice, half-pleased, half-affronted, that he is shaking not with desire, but with laughter.

 

**#6 – Resourceful**

Zuko has been hurt too many times by the people he’s loved – he shuts the windows and locks the doors, so she walks in through the walls.

 

**#7 – Feline**

Both of them are light sleepers – _battle reflexes_ – and on the nights when one can’t sleep, all it takes is a touch for the other to wake, eyes glowing in the dark.

 

**#8 – Ice**

“Now that you’re here,” she says when he visits her in the South Pole, “the only thing to do is go ice skating,” and promptly pushes him out onto the frozen lake.

 

**#9 – Warmth**

“Next time, bring _skates_ ,” he gasps, wrapping his arms around her waist, and the way he laughs as they fall, surprised and delighted, means that Katara doesn’t even feel the bite of the ice she lands on. 

 

**#10 – Betrothal**

She’s surprised at how proficient his handiwork is – what does a Fire Nation boy know of Water Tribe customs? – but Iroh tells her later that Zuko has carved more than a dozen necklaces for her, so that this one will be perfect.

 

**#11 – Laxdæla**

Sometimes she remembers how she’d treated him in the early days, and thinks to herself, _I was worst to the one I loved best_.

 

**#12 – Distance**

“Thinking,” he says, when she asks him where he’s been, and eventually she realizes that for Zuko, _thinking_ is indeed a place. 

 

**#13 – Payback**

He smirks at her expression when she tries fire flakes; she counters with a handful of sea prunes in his morning porridge.

 

**#14 – Imperious**

The crown is tightly fastened in Zuko’s hair, and Katara can tell the errant admiral quailing before him feels just as tightly fastened into his scrutiny.

 

**#15 – Lightning**

Neither of them talk about it, but they hold each other a little tighter when storms roll across the sky, the clouds flashing blue.

 

**#16 – Wager**

At their wedding, she sees June slipping money into Iroh’s hand, disgruntled; when she confronts him about it later, he admits to having started a betting pool; Sokka comes up behind them, coins in his hand, and promptly hightails it out of there when he sees the expression on his sister’s face.

 

**#17 – Hurricane**

“She’s a force of nature,” one of his advisers says under his breath as they watch Katara rail against a nobleman who has made a slight against the Water Tribe, and Zuko replies, “No, she _forces_ nature _._ ”

 

**#18 – Clash**

Neither of them are very good at controlling their tempers; their skirmishes are fire and ice and hissing steam drifting up from the wreckage they leave behind.

 

**#19 – Bed**

And yet, for all the times that they have done battle, against each other and with each other and for each other, he finds that he’d rather surrender to her in other ways.

 

**#20 – Sacrifice**

There will always be something missing for Katara – the hushed silence of the snow, the mist-laced dawn breaking over the icy tundra – Zuko knows this, and he tries, as best as he can, to make it up to her, to make this worth it.

 

**#21 – Late**

“You should be sleeping,” he murmurs, but he doesn’t stop her from picking up a sheaf of his paperwork and sitting down next to him.

 

**#22 – Play**

He watches her waterbending sometimes, the exultation on her face as the water slides around her, and tries to remember when firebending had been a joy, not a weapon.

 

**#23 – Preference**

More often than not, she bests him in their sparring matches, the way Mai used to; left stunned and blinking on the ground, Zuko is forced to reflect on the fact that when it comes to women, perhaps he has a type.

 

**#24 – Mirror**

Zuko and Katara agree on everything important, and disagree on everything else.

 

**#25 – Wrest**

Katara wonders if he knows that she considers it a personal victory when she manages to get him to laugh; not a wry smile or a self-deprecating sigh, but a real laugh, rusty and startled, pulled up from somewhere deep in his stomach.

 

**#26 – Rapprochement**

“You must let the tea cool before you drink it,” Iroh says sagely to Zuko, after another fight with Katara, and so Zuko takes a deep breath and pushes his irritation down and away.

 

**#27 – Power**

He turns his head when she enters a room; reaches for her hand when lightning forks across the sky; slides his mouth down her neck as she twines her fingers in his hair – he does all this without her asking, with only her thoughts to direct him, and Katara wonders if love isn’t just another form of bloodbending.

 

**#28 – Chiaroscuro**

He is a study of sharply rendered contrasts; dark hair, pale skin, eyes the colour of the sun; and there are times her breath catches in her throat at the sight of him, her charcoal boy, her ink-sketched lover.

 

**#29 – Forgiveness**

Things are awkward with Aang until one day, they aren’t – days pass, after all, seasons turn, old loves fade, and people move on.

 

**#30 – Shadow**

One day Zuko wakes up to find his father’s face looking back at him from the mirror; Katara finds him later, crouched on the floor with his forehead on his knees, the glittering shards of the broken glass winking up at her.

 

**#31 – Reflection**

The problem with mirrors, Katara thinks, as she puts her arms around him, is that they can only ever show what is behind you.

 

**#32 – Indicator**

The colour of Zuko’s eyes is her litmus test; butterscotch, and she is in the safe zone, where it is still okay to tease him about playing the tsungi horn, but dark amber and she knows to tread carefully, away from his unpredictable landmines.

 

**#33 – Gauge**

For Zuko's part, it is Katara’s voice he uses to assess the situation.

 

**#34 – Forever**

“Do you really think love can last more than one lifetime?”

 

**#35 – Vow**

“I don’t see why not.”

 

**#36 – Ticklish**

He jerks away from her when she digs her elbow into his side, and when her eyes widen, he thinks, _Oh, no_.

 

**#37 – Mischief**

She grins at him, lazy, all slow delight, and Zuko reflects that although it was Sokka who donned the lupine helmet in the war, there is something of the wolf in Katara as well.

 

**#38 – Farewell**

_It’s you_ , are his last words to her as she sits vigil by his bedside, and he hopes she understands that the words are not just a statement but a confession, a prayer, a surrender.

 

**#39 – Dance**

“I was crown prince for sixteen years, Katara – you don’t need to be so surprised that I know how to dance.”

 

**#40 – Disappear**

Sometimes the Fire Lady vanishes for hours on end; Zuko doesn’t know where, and he never asks; instead, he covers for her obligations, and waits for her to return.

 

**#41 – Yarn**

There are nights where they stay up until the early hours of the morning sharing stories, trading tales, knitting themselves a cloak out of each others’ voices so that they have something to wrap themselves in, to keep them warm in the dark.

 

**#42 – Menagerie**

The pond in the royal gardens is always full of turtleducks.

 

**#43 – Grounded**

There are times when Katara is startled by how much Zuko affects her _physically_ , how much of an effect he has on her body; across the room, she can feel his smile against her hip, feel the smoke of his voice slide across her skin.

 

**#44 – Aftermath**

What Zuko is most afraid of is this: that war doesn’t change you, only reveals you; and it is times like these that he withdraws into himself, holds Katara at arm’s length.

 

**#44 – Foundation**

They do more than love each other; they _like_ each other.

 

**#45 – Candle**

Katara knows it helps to soothe Zuko, lighting them – something in directing the fire to produce small, delicate flames makes him feel more in control – so on bad days, she goes around the palace blowing out as many of them as she can.

 

**#46 – Rain**

Downpours are rare in the Fire Nation, so whenever one falls, Katara drops everything to stand outside in it, head tipped back; sometimes Zuko thinks that the water sliding down her cheeks might be tears, but he is always too afraid to ask.

 

**#47 – Cultivate**

Their love is something they work on, nurture, cherish; passion can fade, but true affection, steady and beating, lasts forever.

 

**#48 – Woo**

Zuko makes flowers bloom from the flames he conjures for her; Katara sends tiny rain showers arcing into his room – it’s their version of standing under balconies and throwing pebbles at the window.

 

**#49 – Scar**

She’s never offered to heal it again, and he’s never asked.

 

**#50 – You**

There is a moment, when she looks at him, and everything around her stands still.


End file.
